DARPA Just Released Its 'Field Guide' for Commercializing the Moon

[Buster's Uncle]

DARPA Just Released Its 'Field Guide' for Commercializing the Moon
Graham Templeton
Extreme Tech
Thu, October 9, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT
3 min read



DARPA has big plans for the Moon. (Credit: NASA)


The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has released a "field guide" for the commercialization of the Moon. This is an odd sentence to write since, of course, DARPA classically makes weapons systems and other technologies that have at least some military application. From GPS to the Internet, civilian applications have always been offshoots of military projects.

In this case, the agency is "leveraging its expertise to explore the economic potential of the Moon." It's unusual to see no attempt to pretend the plan is primarily about defense; just as strange is the open admission that the military's advanced research arm employs at least some researchers to focus on entirely economic plans. This is coming at a time when the United States' actual civilian space agency budget is being cut ferociously. Military-industrial complex, indeed.

Regardless, the field guide summarizes DARPA's path toward achieving its ambitious 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) plan. It ranges from infrastructure plans for things like 24-hour power generation on the Moon's surface to more domestic concerns, like the expenses associated with space insurance. They really go on about the insurance part, actually.



moon with lights of development  Credit: DARPA/Air University


Throughout the document, the plan seems to struggle to justify its own existence, openly noting that early commercial applications for the Moon are difficult to imagine. One of the study's authors even told Space.com that "mining is at the center, and that's the best guess at the moment. The question is, 'What are we mining, what is its concentration, and is it actually economically viable?'"

These are not questions being asked about a plan to determine whether to build on the Moon, but about the concrete plan to do so. With so much investment needed to begin this project, we would hope for a more convincing argument as to why we should do it.

It's a paltry enough justification that it requires us to ask whether this actually is intended for secret military applications, though the current military culture certainly hasn't shied away from openly admitting its plans for military expansion in any other context. It's just as likely that the plan's flimsiness is due to the fact that they chose the Moon as a target not for its actual potential, but for its ability to act as a political reference to the Apollo program—and a deeply ingrained image of American greatness.

The document ends its summary section with this statement: "America is going back to the Moon." This belief, in a vacuum and with very little justification, seems to be what led to the reverse-engineering of this study as a means to justify doing what they've already decided to do.



darpa moon mining vehicles sketch  Which imaginary lunar mining vehicle is your favorite? I like the imaginary moon bulldozer, it's the cutest. Credit: DARPA/Air University


There's also an odd lack of discussion of follow-on monetization of the moon. In particular, nothing is said about using the Moon as a staging area for asteroid mining operations, though asteroids have historically been assumed to be a much more lucrative target for space mining than the Moon itself.

Admittedly, DARPA's document is a fun read. It's over 200 pages, and chock full of wild imaginings about a lunar surface teeming with DARPA-made robots. There will be regolith hauler trucks and verticalized solar farms. There will be a high-speed rail system for transport, and enormous landing pads for heavy-lift rockets.

It also has about as much real data as it can figure out how to include, mainly related to the Moon's capacity for development and proof about how certain technologies would work on the lunar surface. It really is very interesting, but even at its most mathematical, it visibly struggles to seem more important than that.

It seems unlikely that this wish-casting about lunar development will come to fruition. If anything, it's a good example of the US government's current relationship to space—and to science in general.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/darpa-just-released-field-guide-120000086.html